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Learning Solutions 2016 Recap

The eLearning Guild always puts on a great show, and this year’s Learning Solutions 2016 in Orlando, Florida was no exception.

We had a big Kineo presence this year, with a fully-staffed booth on the Expo floor that got a lot of action.

Our focus this year was the launch of ManagementPlus, our new solution geared towards developing skills of new front-line managers. Our booth was buzzing with great conversation and lots of interest as our team took people on tours of this new approach. You can find out more about ManagementPlus by signing up for one of our upcoming tours

Between booth duty, meetings and conversations with many of my clients who were at the show, and time running my own sessions, I didn’t have a lot of time to check out more than a few of the 100+ concurrent sessions. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t learn nothing! Here’s a rundown:

The opening keynote with Bill Nye the Science Guy was great fun and an inspiring presentation. End result? Encourage your kids to be curious!

Wednesday morning I ran a session on trends in “Elearning Today” that sparked some great conversation. I took a look back on the technologies of my first 20 years in the industry, with a look to what’s current and how designers can be thinking about making the most of what’s out there. My session was live-sketch noted by a professional artist. Very cool!

Our own Chip Cleary ran a session Wednesday afternoon called “Beyond the Event: Journeys to Demonstrated Knowledge”. A lot of the design decisions and approaches he talked about in this session inform the approach we use in ManagementPlus – taking people on a journey over an event, building in deliberate and real-world practice, making results visible, and ensuring the involvement and accountability of the learner’s manager.

Thursday morning, before the coffee had even kicked in, Chip and I led a morning buzz session on “Closing the Learning-Doing Gap.” Morning Buzz sessions are informal conversations (no slides or presentations!). We had a great group of practitioners from a wide-range of industries, all thinking hard about how to ensure that we don’t just keep sending people through learning events and then watch them fall off a cliff as they go back to the real-world. When we talk about closing the learning-doing gap, we’re looking for ways to ensure that performance sticks and that people really are equipped to get the work done they need to back on the job.

Thursday afternoon I participated in my new favorite eLearning Guild tradition: “Ignite! Meme-ing the Innovative World of Learning”. Picture me, Jane Bozarth, David Kelly and Jeanette Campos giving six minute talks using only meme images as our slides. We had a packed house with much laughter ensuing. At the end of the session, we ran a caption contest where participants had to come up with their own winning eLearning themed meme captions for a series of slides. Taking an in-the-moment approach, we used Umu as an on the fly audience participation/contest tool. Again, much laughter and creativity!

And so I ran from the Ignite session right on over to DemoFest. DemoFest is a real highlight of any Guild conference. Picture a packed ballroom with more than 50 teams sharing current elearning projects and design work. Chip and I talked for about two hours straight as we took people on an indepth tour of our ManagementPlus pilot program that we ran with City & Guilds. Talk about a long day! Because I was talking myself, I didn’t have the chance to see any of the other projects on display. I’m looking forward to the Guild’s Best of DemoFest showcase on April 13th to see what I missed.

So, yeah. It was an exhausting few days, but exhilarating and fun as always!

About the Author

Cammy
Kineo US - Boston

Our US VP of Learning Design, Cammy has been collaborating with organizations to design online learning programs since 1996. An active speaker and blogger, Cammy gets fired up about instructional design, avoiding the trap of clicky-clicky bling-bling, and ways to use technology to create real behavior change.